


After The World's Ending

by Rubynye



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, One of My Favorites, Redemption, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 15:58:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Afterwards, he is and is not transformed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After The World's Ending

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rabidsamfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidsamfan/gifts).



Afterwards, he is and is not transformed.

The cage that has bound his will for over an Age now suddenly fractures, shudders, and explodes, leaving him stunned and gasping between sunlight and shadow. Above him his fellows, fellow wraiths, fellow slaves, burst into flames kindled from Orodruin's spasms, screaming their death-throes as they are consumed down to drifting ash. But he crouches upon sand and pebbles at the foot of the fiery mountain, conscious of his own soul for the first moment in millennia.

He wishes he might weep. But beneath his black cloak even his bones have gone to powder, he is a swirl of thinking dust, a naked ghost bound to existence. He reaches back for memories of the Man he once was, for his kingdom, for his name, but nothing remains of his living memories save his first glimpse of the Ring of Power adorning his crease-skinned hand.

Who he was forever lost to him, he knows now only what he is, _Nazgul_ , Ringwraith, freed thrall of an annihilated malice.

What is he to do with his emancipation?

He wishes he could weep.

*****

He wonders who he was, where he ruled, if he had been wise. He knows he was a king -- they had all been, before. Angmar had remembered his days of rule; the rest had not cared, had had new duties and vicious joys to distract them.

Movement is more difficult, his dust less cohesive, but he can shift his billowing cloak if he sets the scraps of his will to it. He creeps up the side of the ruined Orodruin and tries to remember anything he would not regret. He wonders if he had a queen or a consort, mistress or lover, but all he can remember are wives and lovers used to lure out warriors, forced to watch them be hewn apart and then thrown to slavering orcs. He wonders if he had children, and can only envision little ones wailing in the wild beside burning ruins and parents' corpses, or led away in ropes to slavery in Mordor's grain fields. He wonders if he had a castle or citadel, and remembers cities falling in flame as he celebrated Angmar's triumphs.

The way to the fire is impassably blocked by stone, great billows and spatters that once were lava.

He drifts and sinks back down to the plain, trying to empty his thoughts of horrors and of hopes.

*****

A time later, days or months, nights or years, beneath the wind that does not sweep him away, the sunlight he cannot feel and the moonlight he cannot see, another spirit approaches him. It is that of an Elf, scarred and seared with its own long wanderings, clad if but lightly in a thin shell of flesh and a tatter of rags. He lies still, mere dust beneath his own rag, waiting for the Elf to pass.

It does not. It halts beside what little's left of him, flexing its sinews to crouch. "Greetings," says the Elf to him. "I am Maglor, son of Feanor."

He rustles in awareness. Legends out of the distant past, the shining Silmarils and their maddened creator, and the fates of his oath-doomed sons. He would ask if he could how this Elf has come to find him here.

"When I heard of Sauron's fall, I came," Maglor answers the unvoiced question. "What is your name?"

He has no other name than _nazgul_ , and that one he will bear no more.

"Nameless, then," says Maglor briskly, standing up. "Come on, then. This is still a bleak and forsaken land."

Having no reason not to do so, Nameless rises, and drifts at Maglor's side.

*****

Elves and wraiths alike do not sleep, so they talk, if it can be called such. Nameless thinks and Maglor answers in word or song or thought as he chooses. The world flickers past, sunlight and shadow, grass and cloud, as Maglor simply and plainly tells of his and his brothers' fell deeds, all the destruction they wrought beneath their father's vow. Nameless tells of the horrors in which he gloried beneath the Master's will, and Maglor neither weeps nor winces, neither condemns nor absolves, but simply listens.

At length Nameless wonders what has kept Maglor bound to flesh, within the circles of the world, all these long and weary years.

"Doing what I might," is the answer, "little kindnesses, when I can."

Is that the way, then, piling good deeds up like stones till they overtop all the cairns Nameless and his fellows built? He puffs with scorn and doubt and hope.

Suddenly, for once, Maglor flares into emotion, eyes flashing with rage. "Are you such a child, to conceive a thought so simple? Could anything I do ever raise my father and brothers, lift one tower from ash, unshed one drop of spilt blood? I do these things -- I found you in Mordor's ruin -- because they fall to my hand and they can be done. Because I choose to." His bony shoulders slump then, his eyes darker than the depths of Barad-dur. "Because I keep choosing. And so must you."

At least Maglor has hands, and when Nameless thinks so, Maglor smiles, cheeks slowly creasing as stiff skin shifts. "You still exist," he answers. "And that too is a choice to be made."

*****

The Sea sings ceaselessly, ever crashing, ever rolling, encompassing and vast. Nameless felt such a vastness once surround him, once sank into the comfort of certainty as his will drowned in a greater, but this immensity seeks nothing, thinks nothing, merely exists as it ever has, washing the shores of the World.

This is where Maglor has led him, sea-winds ruffling his tattered cloak, sea-sands pooling round Maglor's feet. "I know how you can cease," Maglor tells him, "by fire or by water, Orodruin or the Sea. I saw you sink down from the lava-choked door, so here we are now."

Maglor has brought him here to die? A gift? A punishment? A command?

"A choice." Maglor sets his back to the rolling Sea. "The world heals from this latest war, teeming with bright little lives. Who knows what help you could find to give? But you were a Man once, your spirit was not made to strain in endless attenuation down the Ages. So this is the aid I have in mind; I have brought you to the Sea, and I lay before you your choice."

With those words, Maglor sits upon the sands, unmoving as a weathered stone, and the nameless spirit, formerly a _nazgul_ , in days long past once a Man, flutters in the breeze and considers the endless Sea.

**Author's Note:**

> The most excellent prompt:  
>  _Subject: Post war nazgul_
> 
>  
> 
> _Gandalf's words in the books about the corrupting influence of the rings made me wonder whether any of the men who became the nazgul were bad people to begin with. here's what he said:_
> 
>  
> 
> _"Yes, sooner or later -- later, if he is strong or well-meaning to begin with, but neither strength nor good purpose will last -- sooner or later the dark power will devour him."_
> 
>  
> 
> _Anyway, what if one of the nazgul who was previously an alright person survived the war, and then when Sauron's influence ended remorse hit him like a ton of bricks?_
> 
>  
> 
> _http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/2320.html?thread=13248272#t13248272_  
> 


End file.
